Thursday, October 22, 2009 4:40 PM
Poll: Information Gap For Dems On Cap-And-Trade
By Amy Harder, NationalJournal.com
As senators get ready to take up the Kerry-Boxer next week, they might be interested to know what their constituents think -- or don't know -- about climate change and the cap-and-trade system designed to address it.
According to a new poll out today by the Pew Research Center, a majority of Americans (55 percent) have not heard of cap-and-trade legislation at all. And the group most likely to have heard of it is also most likely to oppose it: conservative Republicans. Some 28 percent of them say they have heard "a lot" about plans to limit carbon dioxide emissions; 29 percent approve of it and 60 percent oppose it. Overall, 20 percent of Republicans have heard a lot about cap-and-trade, compared to 17 percent of Independents and 8 percent of Democrats. About 58 percent of Democrats support cap-and-trade. Some 51 percent of Independents do, with 40 percent opposed.
Furthermore, belief that the Earth is warming at all is waning among all political groups and geographic areas. Fifty-seven percent of respondents believe there is "solid evidence" of global warming, down 14 points from April 2008. And of the four major geographic regions surveyed in the poll, one has dropped below majority support: the Midwest, at 48 percent.
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